Elly Yates-Roberts |
During his keynote at Microsoft Ignite 2022, Satya Nadella outlined how artificial intelligence (AI) will become more integral to modern business operations, stating that it will help them to “do more with less”.
“Doing more with less doesn’t mean working harder or longer,” said Nadella. “It means applying technology to amplify what you can do and ultimately, what an organisation can achieve amidst today’s constraints.”
In his speech he discussed five key imperatives for every organisation:
- Be data-driven and optimise with Azure
- Deliver efficiency with automation and AI
- Innovate with a cloud developer platform
- Re-energise your workforce
- Protect everything, everyone, everywhere
Key announcements from the event aligned with these imperatives. For example, Microsoft has added support for open-source database PostgreSQL, enabling developers to leverage the speed, scale and performance of Azure Cosmos DB. It has also added new functionality to support Azure Kubernetes Services on-premises and at the edge with Azure Arc.
On the subject of AI, Microsoft has implemented new capabilities to empower businesses and save time and money. These include DALL-E 2 in Azure OpenAI Service which creates images from text, new tools in Power Platform for automating repetitive business processes, and Microsoft Syntex in Microsoft 365 for extracting insights from documents.
Another key theme of the event was hybrid working and providing employees with workplace flexibility. The new Microsoft Places will help address the associated challenges, with AI-powered features like intelligent recap in Teams. Microsoft has also partnered with Cisco to integrate Teams with its devices and the new Edge Workspaces will enable collaborators to view the same websites and files.